Poor Highmark. Mean old Aetna is picking on it.

Turns out that the division of corporate territories among insurance corporations by the ACA ain't working out quite congenially:

When Westinghouse Electric Co., the Cranberry-based nuclear engineering giant, announced this autumn that it was jilting Highmark Inc. and handing its health insurance business to Aetna in 2014, Highmark responded with radio and TV ads implying that Aetna is an out-of-state carpetbagger, stealing business and jobs from Pennsylvanians.

While those Highmark ads are more indirectly targeted at local rival UPMC than at Aetna Inc., the Connecticut-based health insurer wants Pittsburgh to know that the carpetbagger suggestion is misplaced.

"That is just so far from the truth, [we] feel obliged to correct it," said Walt Cherniak, a spokesman for Aetna.

So Highmark is whining because Aetna is cutting into its territory?

Implications for Delaware, by the way, include the fact that Aetna is present on the local health insurance exchange ... 'cause Aetna just recently bought Coventry.

Look for Highmark (a so-called "non-profit" corporation that buys up hospital chains and optometry labs, and invests in medical aid clinics in order to run off its competition) to whine here in the First State to its other wholly owned subsidiary: Insurance Commissioner Karen Weldin Stewart.

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